Former Caro coach gets prison sentence

Published 8:00 pm, Thursday, August 18, 2011

CARO (AP) — A girl who was molested by her high school softball coach when she was 14-years-old will eventually forget the ordeal, a defense lawyer told a Michigan judge in arguing for a more lenient sentence.

Thomas Warda said at the sentencing hearing for Mickey Gotwalt, 52, that his client “didn’t kill this girl,” according to a court transcript obtained by The Saginaw News.

“I mean this isn’t — I don’t think she’s gonna have psychological injury the rest of her life,” Warda said Thursday. “I mean he’ll be in prison, but, you know, she’ll have forgotten all about this at some point.”

Warda told Tuscola County Circuit Judge Patrick Joslyn that a reasonable sentence would be 4 to 8 years in prison, and said Gotwalt wasn’t a pedophile. Gotwalt pleaded guilty to crimes involving sexual touching of the girl in summer 2010, rather than sexual penetration, and acknowledged kissing her.

The judge disagreed and sentenced Gotwalt, of Tuscola County’s Wells Township, to from 7 years and 2 months to 15 years in prison.

“The victim of this offense will be impacted the rest of her life. This just doesn’t go away,” Joslyn said, according to the transcript.

On Friday, Warda said he stood by his remarks in court.

“I simply made those comments,” Warda told The Associated Press. “The judge was upset. I just have to tell it like it is.”

Warda said the girl fell in love with her coach and sent him hundreds of text messages. While conceding that the relationship was “completely inappropriate” and shouldn’t have happened, he said Gotwalt was undergoing cancer treatment at the time and was suffering from depression.

“I’m not blaming the victim,” Warda said. “I’m just saying there are circumstances here, but nobody wanted to hear them.”

Tuscola County Prosecutor Mark E. Reene said Gotwalt’s crimes will have a lifelong impact on the teenager.

“The hope is that over time that impact will be lessened, but to suggest that she will forget about this and move on, there’s absolutely zero chance of that happening,” Reene said.

The prosecutor, according to the transcript, told the judge that Gotwalt — who is married — had purchased wedding rings that he was going to give to the 14-year-old girl.

But Warda, who has told The News that Gotwalt has received treatment for cancer, told the judge Gotwalt was “vulnerable” and “sick and ill and depressed” prior to the crimes.

“And I believe, judge, it was his medications that allowed him to miss some of the signs” of an inappropriate relationship with the girl, Warda said.

“When she started sending him naked pictures of herself, he should have done something,” Warda said. “He should have contacted the school or a counselor or something, but he was vulnerable and he was sick and he made a very poor judgment.”

According to the transcript, Reene indicated Gotwalt exchanged hundreds of text messages in one day with the girl, and that after Gotwalt had been banned from school property, the former coach still would go near the school and use a third party to make contact with her.

“He was vulnerable?” Reene told the judge. “He was the one that was vulnerable? She’s 14. He was in the position of authority.”

Warda said his client is not a pedophile.

“This isn’t some — this isn’t — you don’t take up being a pedophile at 51 years old,” Warda said.

Gotwalt coached at Caro High School. He earlier pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct, and apologized Thursday in court.

“I’d like to apologize to the victim, the victim’s families, my families, wife and children, the community and this court,” Gotwalt told the judge.